Factors Correlated with Communication Confidence in Persons with Aphasia: A Synthetic Cohort Analysis

Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that affects a person's communication abilities. Consequently, aphasia can have a profound impact on how persons with aphasia (PWA) experience their personal life. Recently, approaches to aphasia management have taken a turn from the medical model of deficit to the functional and social model of deficit, which places emphasis on functional communication, social participation, and communication efficacy. In line with this approach, the construct of communication confidence was introduced. Communication confidence is a psychosocial construct related to the constructs of life participation, autonomy and self-determination, and self-efficacy. Communication confidence in PWA has received little attention, although confidence levels have been shown to be related to lifestyle changes in PWA. The purpose of this study was to determine the factors that correlate with communication confidence in PWA and contribute to broadening the general understanding of this construct. Fifteen participants with with aphasia as the result of a left hemisphere cerebrovascular accident (CVA) participated in the investigation. In a single session at East Carolina University in the Communication Equity and Outcomes Laboratory, the participants provided their medical and demographic information and were administered an objective impairment-level language measure as well as subjective measures. The former was the Western Aphasia Battery - Revised (WAB-R) to assess their language performance and the latter were the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Quality of Communication Life Scale (ASHA-QCL) and the Communication Confidence Rating Scale for Aphasia (CCRSA) to capture their perception of their communication impairment from the quality of communication life standpoint and a communication confidence point of view, respectively. Synthetic data analysis utilized the distributional properties of the original data to interpolate statistically robust estimates of the relationship between communication confidence and demographic, objective measure, and subjective measure variables. The synthetic cohort analyses simulated results using a probabilistically constructed simulation of 5000 participants. This synthesized data were closely similar to that collected across all included variables. Regression analyses indicated that a statistically significant positive correlation of ASHA-QCL (p = 0.03) and ASHA-Q18 (p = 0.04) with the CCRSA existed. Demographic variables and objective measures were not correlated with the CCRSA. The constructs of quality of life, quality of communication life, and communication of confidence, therefore, seem strongly interrelated and are important factors that may contribute to better adaptation and living successfully with aphasia

The Relationship between Semantics, Phonology, and Naming Performance in Aphasia: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

This project investigates the relationship between semantic and phonological abilities and naming performance in individuals with post-stroke aphasia. The analysis utilized data from the Moss Aphasia Psycholinguistics Project Database (Mirman et al., 2010), comprising of 296 individuals with post-stroke aphasia. In this project, a structural equation modeling approach was employed to construct a model incorporating latent variables representing semantics and phonology, along with manifest variables representing naming accuracy and various error patterns on the Philadelphia Naming Test (PNT; Roach et al., 1996). We present herein the R code used to conduct the structural equation modeling analysis, investigate the missingness of data, and perform partial correlation analyses, as well as an accompanying R code glossary to aid in understanding the procedures and functions utilized

Factors Correlated with Communication Confidence in Persons with Aphasia: A Synthetic Cohort Analysis

Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that affects a person's communication abilities. Consequently, aphasia can have a profound impact on how persons with aphasia (PWA) experience their personal life. Recently, approaches to aphasia management have taken a turn from the medical model of deficit to the functional and social model of deficit, which places emphasis on functional communication, social participation, and communication efficacy. In line with this approach, the construct of communication confidence was introduced. Communication confidence is a psychosocial construct related to the constructs of life participation, autonomy and self-determination, and self-efficacy. Communication confidence in PWA has received little attention, although confidence levels have been shown to be related to lifestyle changes in PWA. The purpose of this study was to determine the factors that correlate with communication confidence in PWA and contribute to broadening the general understanding of this construct. Fifteen participants with with aphasia as the result of a left hemisphere cerebrovascular accident (CVA) participated in the investigation. In a single session at East Carolina University in the Communication Equity and Outcomes Laboratory, the participants provided their medical and demographic information and were administered an objective impairment-level language measure as well as subjective measures. The former was the Western Aphasia Battery - Revised (WAB-R) to assess their language performance and the latter were the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Quality of Communication Life Scale (ASHA-QCL) and the Communication Confidence Rating Scale for Aphasia (CCRSA) to capture their perception of their communication impairment from the quality of communication life standpoint and a communication confidence point of view, respectively. Synthetic data analysis utilized the distributional properties of the original data to interpolate statistically robust estimates of the relationship between communication confidence and demographic, objective measure, and subjective measure variables. The synthetic cohort analyses simulated results using a probabilistically constructed simulation of 5000 participants. This synthesized data were closely similar to that collected across all included variables. Regression analyses indicated that a statistically significant positive correlation of ASHA-QCL (p = 0.03) and ASHA-Q18 (p = 0.04) with the CCRSA existed. Demographic variables and objective measures were not correlated with the CCRSA. The constructs of quality of life, quality of communication life, and communication of confidence, therefore, seem strongly interrelated and are important factors that may contribute to better adaptation and living successfully with aphasia